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Wednesday, February 22, 2012

I'm Not a Flake. I'm Sensitive.

Some people buy tools. Others buy shoes.

I buy books.

My sister is staring at the stacks of them on the floor of my living room.

“What?” I say.

She picks one up. “Are these your I’ve-read-these piles or your I’m-going-to-read-these piles?”

“Those are the unread.”

She shakes her head. “You’re never going to die, are you?”

“Don’t you read?”

She shakes her head again, chuckles. “Not like this.”

She puts the book down. “What are you reading now?”

“I just started White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov.”

“Gesundheit.”

“Thank you.”

“And what did you read before that?”

“Why do you ask?”

She shrugs and tilts her head to the left, a movement reminiscent of our mother. “You called that beggar outside the theater a schnorrer.”

I smile. “The last book was a collection of short stories by Sholom Aleichem. Fiddler on the Roof was based on his stories about Tevye the Milkman.”

“Really,” Karen deadpans.

“What?! The guy acted like he was entitled to my leftover malted milk balls! Why should I give him my malted milk balls?”

Karen stares at me.

“The word fit,” I say, emphatically. “And anyway, so what? I’m reading! What should I be reading if not the books I’m reading?”

“Is that accent you’ve just developed courtesy of the collection of Yiddish short stories, too?”

“Maybe,” I say, evasively.

There is a moment of silence.

“You do that, you know,” she says.

“Do what?”

“Remember when you read The Great Gatsby?”

I stare at her.

“Afterward, you wanted to go clamming or some dang thing! You wanted to lay around the house in period dresses and drink room-temperature gin!”

“I’m sensitive,” I say, perhaps a touch defensively.

“And what about when you read The Kitchen God’s Wife? Isn’t that the book that made you say “Ai-eeee” all the time?”

My eyes shift to the right, then to the left. “Maybe.”

She starts to laugh, and then we are both laughing. “You thought you were Chinese,” she says, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “Oh, my God.”

“I said I’m sensitive, dammit!”

“Oh, yeah," she says. "Sensitive.”

“I am! Shaddap.”

A decision is abruptly made in Karen’s head, and she grabs her purse, roots around for her car keys. “Hmmm. I’m thinking lunch,” she says. “I’m thinking either deli or Chinese.”

44 comments:

I love that you get so caught up in books - so do I. After reading all of Kurt Vonnegut I now find myself saying - ho hum, so it goes and other little things that present as quirks in his books - also thinking of writing more short stories than poetry. Books are the escape into other worlds, true freedom if you can handle it. - Jhon

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I strongly considered getting tatted up when I read the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series. I also started seriously exploring us taking a tour of Egypt when I read Cleopatra: A Life.

I've just started American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History and I wondered why my husband started locking up the rifles...

Love it! I remember thinking I was the karate kid for a while... I mustn't have read the right books, or else the effects have been too subtle to notice. I shall have to pay more attention! Hi-yaaaaaaaa!

I've just done my homework for next week's creative writing class - I had to write a conversation for two voices, but I've yet to find a book that would have helped me cope with the accent of the second character. What a pity you don't live next door - I could have consulted one of YOUR many books!!!

Love this! I've also got stacks for read and unread books, and am sensitive! I've decorated houses based on books I've read, and truly tried out recipes found in some. I wanted to start a dinner book club where all we read were books with recipes (NOT cookbooks but actual stories with recipes as a "character") and then gather once a month to try the recipes and discuss the book.

My daughter identified with Anne of Green Gables and I think she was changed by that book (in a good way). I used to act like the women I would see in the movies. For some strange reason, I loved Scarlett O'Hara - from the book, even before I saw the movie. She was such a bitch! I think I liked her because she was the opposite of me. She had a lot of guts.

This happens for me with books AND with other people's language. So help me, I talk to other people based on how they talk to me. If they're droppin' their g's, I'm droppin' mine. If they're using bad grammar, mine slips a notch too. If they are comfortable using polysyllabic words, I let mine loose. It's like being a chameleon. It helps me feel like I fit in. Hmm. I wonder what a shrink would say about that ... anyway, yes, sensitive seems like a better description than looney, doesn't it ...

I read your dialogue in the appropriate accent. It just goes with the words you wrote.I do this too. My daughter inherited this...both my sisters and my mother have the book buyers addiction as well. It must follow the female genetic code in our family.How do you find time to write so much and still have time to read all of those wonderful books?

I like the idea of you living the book you're reading. Maybe I should try that. I'll try to finally get through Ulysses but will have to do the entire thing in a day. The Molly Bloom episode will have to move faster than Molly might like.

I have read out over 90 authors and have been slowly rereading my old books (over 500). What is truly frightening or wonderful, I don't really know is that i don't remember a lot of them. I am getting ready to reread "The Third Policeman,'" by Flann O'Brien. I remember loving the book but only remember a few snippets........by the way....thanks for visiting, and commenting......kt

I will go through times of studying one particular movie for awhile, so I was working on "Havana" and doing abit of Lena Olin and it would drive my wife crazy, but I just played innocent, "What do you mean?"

Pearl, you are most definitely in good company. I forgot to mention in my last post that I end up speaking differently when speaking to people that have different dialects --English or otherwise--drawls included, but it's even worse than that, I also think in different dialect! Maybe we're not sensitive, just plain weird. ":)

After reading A Moveable Feast I wanted to move to Paris, and do nothing more than hang out in a cafe and write. And I'm not ashamed to admit, I began teaching myself French after reading My Life in France.

Well played young lady! I knew I liked you...I am a book nerd first class. I even go back and read my favorites over and over. I can't tell you how many times I've read the December 1965 Playboy. Um, wait...does that count?